Saturn said –Then who judges Christ the Lordon Doomsday, when he judges all creation?Solomon said –Who dares judge God the Savior, who made us from dust,out of night's wound? Tell me, what was but was not?

Saturn said –Why do crying and laughter come togetherlike companions? They often destroy high-minded contentment –how does this happen?Solomon said –He who likes to worry and grumbleis miserable and cowardly: he disgusts God most.

Saturn said –Why can't we all goproudly into God's kingdom?Solomon said –Neither fire's embrace and frost's chillnor snow and sun can live together,nor can age be stirred up. Whatever has less powermust bend and yield.

Saturn said –But how do good and evil happen?When twins are born from the same womantheir success is unequal. One is unlucky on earth; the other lucky,popular with leaders.The one lives for a short while,wanders about this wide creation, then leaves it sadly.I ask you, Lord Solomon, which has the better lot?

Solomon said –When she conceives, a mother doesn't decidewhat shape the baby's journey will take through the wide world.She often raises a child to harm,bringing grief to herself: she suffersat the harshness of his fate.Often she keens unstoppablyover that son, when he sets out on some journeywith a restless mind, a weary heart,a sad soul, slipping easilyinto weariness and loss of will. Deprived of honors,sometimes this grief-struck ghost avoids the Hall,living far from people, miserable and anxious. His only lord glances quickly away from him.So a mother has no power over the child's destinywhen she conceives, but from birthone thing follows another, as is the way of the world.

– from an anonymous Old English text called Solomon and Saturn, translated by Fiona Sampson, printed in The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation, edited by Greg Delanty and Michael Matto (New York : Norton, 2011)

COMRADES OF TIME

"Hesitation with regard to the modern projects mainly has to do with a growing disbelief in their promises. Classical modernity believed in the ability of the future to realize the promises of past and present – even after the death of God, even after the loss of faith in the immortality of the soul. The notion of a permanent art collection says it all: archive, library and museum promised secular permanency, a material infinitude that substituted for the religious promise of resurrection and eternal life. During the period of modernity, the 'body of work' replaced the soul as the potentially immortal part of the Self. . . . But today, this promise of an infinite future holding the results of our work has lost its plausibility. Museums have become the sites of temporary exhibitions rather than spaces for permanent collections. The future is ever newly planned – the permanent change of cultural trends and fashions makes any promise of a stable future for an artwork or a political project improbable."